Strategy, CE, Tech, Climate Change, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship

The Future of

Wednesday, April 06, 2005

Despite what we know about the good Professor Murphy and his law, an article in the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports (in part) as follows. What's unclear is whether antiviral drugs cited in the article would be effective in preventing death should a killer virus somehow escape the BL-3 containment labs where the research is being conducted.

What health officials fear most about bird flu --- that it could
trigger a pandemic by acquiring genes from a human flu virus and the
ability to spread easily among people --- has not yet been known to
happen naturally.

But scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in
Atlanta are playing out a scenario that could actually create the
dreaded pandemic strain. The dangerous work is just getting under way
in a high level biosecurity laboratory off Clifton Road.

The CDC's lab is thought to be the only one in the world where genes
from a regular flu virus are being mixed with avian influenza, also
known as H5N1.

"We're trying to understand, if this does occur in nature, what the
properties of the viruses would be and how serious the pandemic might
be," said Nancy Cox, chief of the CDC's influenza branch.

Monday, April 04, 2005

As reported in NewsTarget, consulting firm Bio Economic Research Associates ("bio-era") has published a study suggesting that the economic consequences of avian influenza are spreading faster than the disease itself.

“According to the quantitative measures we developed for assigning
relative economic risk exposure to infectious disease outbreaks for
countries in Asia, Hong Kong and Singapore are especially vulnerable to
the initial economic shock waves that would ensue from a pandemic,”
said James Newcomb, Managing Director and principal author of the
bio-era report. “However, the secondary impacts on other countries,
especially China, could have far-reaching impacts for economies around
the world, including the US,” he added.

A major purpose of scenario planning is to empower people, organizations, and industries to evaluate a diverse set of possible futures, decide which future they prefer, and to identify those key milestones or Events that lead logically to the desired outcome. In short, scenario planning provides a structured framework for strategy determination and implementation.

Participants can then monitor the environment using War Rooms and similar techniques to identify counter and confirming Events and trends. More importantly, participants can also organize and utilize available resources to pursue the Events that are key to the desired outcome.

I've been considering Endates that are alternative visions to the one proposed by Leonhard and Kusek, Music Like Water, which I call The Music Utility. The second installment of this series outlined the 10,000 Mainiac MTV Channels Endstate, an oversimplification of which is that music videos become far more important than simple audio. Yesterday's third installment, The Return of the Artists, suggested that change in industry structure in which Artists and their agents are the most important players is the future of the industry. Today, naturally, The Empires Strike Back.

I've been considering Endstates that are alternative visions to the one
proposed by Leonhard and Kusek, Music Like Water, which I call, the
Music Utility. The second installment of this series outlined the 10,000 Maniac MTV Channels Endstate, an oversimplification of which is that music videos become far more important than simple audio.

The Music Utility Endstate is mainly about the evolution of the supporting technology infrastructure and business models, principally wireless and audio-enabled devices and subscription based streaming music rather than file downloads. In the Kusek and Leonhard version, Music Like Water, artists have much more power and leverage compared with other actors in the industry, such as the major music labels.

The Music Utility Endstate does not depend, in my view, on this fundamental change in the structure of the music industry. The majors, viewed as dinosaurs by some) could very well morph their service and business models and by doing so, avoid extinction. More on this point tomorrow.

The central organizing vision of the book is a future for the music industry that they refer to as "Music Like Water." Some of the essential elements of this Endstate are that for a fixed fee, consumers get access to a virtually unlimited music library. One important difference between this future and the present time is that Kusek and Leonhard expect that streaming music will be far more important than music distribution based on files and downloading.

Here I want to begin suggesting some other Endstates for the music industry. Today's Endstate might be called "10,000 Maniac MTV Channels". The hallmark of this Endstate is that music video is far more important than plain old music. A majority of music is experienced through video. Watching is more important than simply listening. And MVideo tastes change rapidly; attention spans are extremely short.

Scenario planning entails defining 4-6 disparate visions of the future of an industry, a company, strategic business unit, or global challenge issue, such as global warming. The Future of Music book defines one vision of the future that the authors call "Music Like Water," by which they mean that streaming music is available everywhere, much like water. They envision the evolution of business models, distribution channels, industry structure, and network and computing technologies such that music is available all the time in virtually all places on all devices. In The Music Like Water future, musicians are more empowered than today because the quintessential relationship is between the artist and the fan or consumer, which is to say that music is an experience rather than a physical product or a file to be download. The music experience is king (or queen).

Part of the support they offer for Music Like Water future is a discussion of 10 key truths about the music industry that reinforce the notion of music as experience and the primacy of the artist:

Tuesday, March 22, 2005

Here is a World Health Organization (WHO) report on the development of a human "bird flu" vaccine published in February:

Availability of H5N1 prototype strains for influenza pandemic vaccine development

February 2005

The WHO Influenza Surveillance Network has characterized H5N1 influenza viruses isolated from humans and animals from several countries affected by the 2004/2005 H5N1 outbreak in Asia. WHO has also made recommendations on the antigenic and genetic characteristics of H5N1 viruses which are suitable for vaccine production.

Outbreaks of highly pathogenic avian influenza A (H5N1) occurred among poultry in 8 countries in Asia (Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Japan, Lao, South Korea, Thailand and Vietnam) during late 2003 and early 2004. At that time, more than 100 million birds either died from the disease or were culled.

From December 30, 2003 to March 17, 2004, 12 confirmed human cases of avian influenza A (H5N1) were reported in Thailand and 23 in Vietnam, resulting in a total of 23 deaths.

By late February, however, the number of new human H5 cases being reported in Thailand and Vietnam slowed and then stopped. Within a month, countries in Asia were reporting that the avian influenza outbreak among poultry had been contained. No conclusive evidence of sustained human-to-human transmission was found.Recent Developments

Beginning in late June 2004, new lethal outbreaks of H5N1 among poultry were reported by several countries in Asia: Cambodia, China , Indonesia , Malaysia (first-time reports), Thailand and Vietnam. There has not been a resurgence of avian influenza in South Korea and Japan, and the outbreaks are reported to be controlled in those countries. It is unknown to what extent H5N1 outbreaks in the other countries may be ongoing. For more information about outbreaks in poultry, visit the World Organization for Animal Health website.

Monday, March 21, 2005

According to a Dow Jones article published on excite.com here, rates may have peaked for buying certain search terms on services such as Google:

It's no secret that the golden age of dirt-cheap search terms has passed and that we're now in the era of steadily rising search term prices. Although for many advertisers paid search still pays off, returns on investment are diminishing and some retailers have cut back on paid search budgets.

"In the early days we were bidding 10 cents, probably a dollar 18 months ago and now $2.50," said Whitney Anderson, chief executive of Mother Nature Inc., a natural products e-tailer.

The company's ROI has dropped for terms it's been bidding on for four to five years, especially following Google Inc.'s (GOOG) IPO, when an influx of new advertisers saturated the market, said Anderson. Even some second-tier search engines have raised minimum bids from 5 cents to 10 cents - enough toaffectexpenses. So the company decided to freeze its paid search budget early this year at somewhere north of $1 million.

"The absolute number is set," said Anderson, "and not growing as fast as the rest of our ad budget."

Even eBay Inc. (EBAY), one of the biggest paid search advertisers, is feeling the effects of price increases. Bill Cobb, president of eBay North America, said at a meeting with financial analysts last month that the company was surprised by key word prices and viewed current pricing as being "a little wild." The auctions company is watching prices closely.

According to the Corporate Social Responsibility Newswire Service, CSRWire, U.S. oil and gas companies have taken action to reduce global climate change risk:

After extensive negotiations with shareholders, Anadarko Petroleum, Apache, ChevronTexaco and three other leading U.S. oil and gas companies have taken far-reaching actions in recent months to disclose their potential financial exposure from climate change and develop strategies to improve their strategic positioning as international pressure grows to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and promote renewable energy sources.

The company actions come in the wake of record-high voting support last year for shareholder resolutions seeking more climate risk disclosure from oil and gas companies, which face growing regulatory, competitive and public pressure to reduce their reliance on fossil fuels and other greenhouse gas emitting energy sources. Shareholder resolutions with Apache Corp., Anadarko Petroleum Corp. and Marathon Oil Corp. all received record voting support last year, with support at Apache reaching 37 percent.

Thursday, March 17, 2005

So the future of energy just might include Cold Fusion, this according to the latest issue of New Scientist [issue 2491, 19 March 2005, page 30]:

AFTER 16 years, it's back. In fact, cold fusion never really went away. Over a 10-year period from 1989, US navy labs ran more than 200 experiments to investigate whether nuclear reactions generating more energy than they consume - supposedly only possible inside stars - can occur at room temperature. Numerous researchers have since pronounced themselves believers.

Wednesday, March 16, 2005

Since at least the early 1990s, the proverbial pendulum swings between some form of central services / thin client computing and distributed / peer-to-peer / grid computing. The pendulum is still swinging. Molly Wood's article on Google's strategic intent suggests server / thin client computing is where the G folks are heading as a way of directly challenging Microsoft for the hearts and minds of computer users. Here's her major point:

Everyone seems to agree that Google's showing signs of building some
sort of operating system. One of Microsoft's key Windows architects, Marc Lucovsky,
recently defected to Google, and so far, his duties at Google haven't
been detailed. Google's also been rapidly expanding onto the desktop--Google Desktop is the company's only other Google-developed product that's not in beta. They've acquired the photo-organizing software Picasa, along with the 3D mapping software Keyhole. There's e-mail client extraordinaire Gmail and Google Deskbar, which lets you search for and display Google results without
opening a browser (a first step toward rendering IE, Firefox, Netscape,
Opera, and company obsolete?). Meanwhile, a walk through Google Labs
shows you personalized search projects, mobile solutions such as Google
SMS and Froogle Wireless, and, of course, Google Maps.